Crepe, part 2

It has been a long time since my last post. I worked diligently to finish my crepe yarn before leaving on an exciting trip to Scotland (more on that later) because I just hate leaving big projects half done at home. That spinning wheel wasn't going to travel with me, so I prioritized the finishing of that yarn before my departure.

Here are some of the singles as I spun them. Notice the cross-lacing - this was necessary to make the wheel take up properly. I guess I am nearing the edge of how fine a single I can spin on this wheel? Not sure about that, but cross-lacing solves all my take up problems so I do it. (Don't worry, I'm not in the market for a new wheel. Not yet.)

Here are the singles after being transferred to storage bobbins but before plying. They are always so pretty at this stage!

And here is the overtwisted S-twist 2-ply, ready to ply with the regular S-twist single:

How do you think the twist looks here? You never really know until you set the twist. I will say, though, that I knew I was off when I took this skein off the winder. It twisted a LOT:

Here is how it looked after wet finishing and drying. Meh?

Reader, I don't love this yarn.

I was in love with my sample skein, but I thought it was just a little bit loose. I started spinning singles with more twist, and I also plied with more twist, and the resulting yarn is... just too twisty! It isn't all the way to wiry, but it's headed in that direction. I'm disappointed that I took the time to make a solid sample and then deviated from it too much.

Bottom line: I think I overthought it. That's disappointing, since I devoted two full braids of fiber to this project and spent the extra hours required to construct a crepe yarn. My finished skein is a whopping 548 yards and 135 grams, so maybe my next attempt need only use a single 100 gram braid.

I will still probably knit socks from this skein. Handspinning can be tricksy sometimes. It is possible to love a fiber in the braid and not in the skein, or in the skein but not in the finished knitted (or woven or crocheted) project. I have been surprised before. Maybe this will be a case of not loving the skein, but not noticing in the final project?

One thing this project taught me is that I really can spin singles fine enough to make 3-ply socks yarn that is truly fingering weight, which is what I want. So yay for that! I will try crepe again sometime, too.

I have been away from my wheel for a little over a month. I got back from a fantastic trip to Scotland (I promise, photos will be coming), had a short time to recover and rest, and then went on a super fun trip to a conference in Cleveland. You know how I feel about Cleveland (it's the best). While the home and work schedule seem super hectic, I often feel like I don't have time to spin - but that is when I most need to spin. I just need to get started with a project.

During my short time at home between trips, I took an online spinning class called "A Dyer's Guide to Spinning Multicolored Braids" with Sasha Torres of Sheepspot. It was fantastic! So I kind of want to dive into some of those braids. But I also want to do something super calm and different. I am thinking about picking up these bags of roving I got at the Shenandoah Fiber Festival last fall:

They are a blend of Romney, mohair, and alpaca. I want to blend them with my hand cards so I get a very long gradient yarn that moves from green to blue. Sounds like fun, right? I think blending fiber sounds dreamy right now, so that's probably what I'll do. I just need to get out the scale and start separating my fiber so I can do what I want with it. That requires some brain power, which is short supply now. But I think it's coming back.